


A Few Shadows

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Foxtrot [111]
Category: Dollhouse, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: AU, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 19:02:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6717280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: <i>Stargate Atlantis, John Sheppard/Rodney McKay: Everybody has a dark side / Do you love me, can you love mine."</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>Rodney's date with Imprint CIA Agent, Jack, can't be too bad. NSA Agent Brendan Dean is a nice guy, after all.</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>Set post-series.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Few Shadows

When Rodney climbed out of his car in front of the seedy bar with the flickering neon sign (half of the letters were dark), he was sure he was in the wrong place. But the map app on his phone insisted he was at his intended destination.  
  
Rodney tugged the collar of his jacket up and stepped inside the smoke-filled bar. It was dim inside. Led Zeppelin was playing from a battered jukebox in the corner. There were booths all around the edges of the room, stools along the scratched and dented wood bar, and pool tables and dartboards taking up the rest of the room.  
  
Every man in the room looked like the man Rodney’s grade school teachers had always warned him away from.  
  
Except for the man in the back corner. That man looked like John Sheppard, if John Sheppard smoked, drank whisky neat, and hadn’t shaved in three days. He wore a button-down shirt and a dark jacket and, when Rodney sat opposite him, had silver cross on a silver chain gleaming in the hollow of his throat.  
  
“Rodney,” the man said, cool and measured.  
  
Brendan was an NSA agent. This man was CIA Agent.  
  
“What should I call you?” Rodney asked. Somehow he didn’t think the rest of the bar’s patrons would be pleased to hear they had a CIA Agent in their midst.  
  
“Call me Jack,” he drawled. “Have a seat.”  
  
Rodney sat. “So, our date?”  
  
“Drinks, pool, darts. Whatever you feel like losing at,” Jack said.  
  
Rodney peered at him. “You don’t like me, do you?”  
  
“Don’t dislike you.” Jack sipped at his whisky. Rodney wondered how many he’d had, but he seemed clear-eyed for the moment. “Not really my type, though. Got a wife, three little boys. None of them real, of course, just courtesy of the Dollhouse, but they’re real enough up here.” He tapped at his temple.  
  
Rodney knew not all of the imprints were necessarily for ‘romantic engagements’, some had been task-oriented, and he knew they were all basically real people, but he’d never considered that any of them were married with families beyond fictional parents and maybe a sibling or two.  
  
Rodney didn’t have particularly good aim with projectiles, but he was a physicist. Pool he could do. “Pool, I think. Don’t be so sure I’ll lose, though.”  
  
Jack grinned, a brief, predatory gleam of teeth, and then he flagged down a waitress, ordered Rodney a scotch and soda. “That’s the spirit.”  
  
Once the waitress brought the drink, they picked an unoccupied pool table, and Jack slotted some quarters into it to start a game. He racked, let Rodney break.  
  
“So here’s the deal,” Jack said, “I don’t like beating around the bush, and I don’t like bullshit.”  
  
Rodney nodded. “Okay.”  
  
“I was Pararescue before I joined The Company. Done shit and seen shit that’ll make your hair curl, and I know what you’ve seen.” Jack caught his gaze briefly, held it, sank three balls in a row. “After I joined The Company, I did some rough stuff. Aggressive interrogation. Wet work. You hurt John? They’ll never find your body.”  
  
Rodney fumbled his next shot.

“Remember back when John was kidnapped, held off-world for a hundred and fifteen days?”

Rodney nodded mutely.

“They tortured us every day. And by us, I do mean _us_. Every day, when those bastards came to our cell, a different one of us would step up and take it. Everyone from little Traci to that pansy-ass Brian to poor Physicist to Julian and back again. We let them touch us. We let them torture us. We let them break us to keep John safe.”

Rodney remembered the base psych had been unnerved by how resilient John had seemed after the torture, how well he bounced back, had been concerned that he was just hiding it.

“So don’t think for one second we won’t give it our everything, each and every one of us, to protect him again should the need arise. Clear?”

Rodney nodded.

“Good.” Jack clapped him on the shoulder. “I gotta say, you remind me of this guy I was stationed with in A-stan. Super bright, little too chatty for his own good, but brave as hell when it counted.”

Rodney won two out of the five pool games they played, and afterward, he stumbled to his car, shaking and frightened.  _Aggressive interrogation. Wet work._ The words had played over and over in his mind all night. He’d known John had dark things in him, memories of the abuse Joe and Traci had suffered, his own past horrors as a soldier, the inherent horror of having been a victim of the Dollhouse. He hadn’t even considered this kind of darkness inside of the kind, brave man he knew.

But then he remembered how John had sacrificed Henry Wallace to Todd the Wraith, remembered the look in John’s eyes when Rodney had talked about sacrificing himself, and whatever darkness John had inside of him, it was darkness, not evil, and Rodney wasn’t afraid of a few shadows.


End file.
